I welcomed this opportunity to address you, the followers of After Reset, to whom I am so deeply indebted for a lifetime of support, friendship and trust. Today, I’m happy to report significant headway has been made in the development of the game, and especially the graphic novel. At this point the majority of TFoG obligations have been completed, but we’ll back to that in a minute.

I welcomed this opportunity to address you, the followers of After Reset, to whom I am so deeply indebted for a lifetime of support, friendship and trust. Today, I’m happy to report significant headway has been made in the development of the game, and especially the graphic novel. At this point the majority of TFoG obligations have been completed, but we’ll back to that in a minute.PATCH #030315 RELEASED!

Some of our backers may have noticed that your Steam application After Reset RPG was updated on Tuesday, March 03. Although you can read all the patch notes in PatchNotes.txt (which is in your game folder), I’d like to publish the full list of changes in this update so that any future backers can follow our chronological process from start to finish.

User Interface:
• Various interface fixes for MAC and Linux versions.
• The intensity and frequency of the holographic distortion visual effect has been substantially reduced.
• Auto-scaling for panels in the main menu added.

User Interface:
• New cursors added.
• Main menu text size scaling added to the Options/Gameplay menu.
• Rotate option added for the model of the character through the character creation.
• Alphabetical auto-sorting for the Feats added.
• New icons for the Skills added.
• Typos in the feats descriptions corrected.
• Loading screens design reworked.
• Camera controls for the gameplay added.
• Fog of war, Range-of-Sight (RoS) and Field-of-Sight (FoS) added.
• Highlighting system added.

Graphics:
• Glass shader for the OpenGL fixed.
• Injured animation for humanoids added (activates if a humanoid have less than 10% of its hit points).
• Realistic Decal system added.

Audio:
• Music for the Science Facility level added.
• Voice for the Prologue narration added.

Video:
• Prologue's intro added.

Miscellaneous:
• "Space" hotkey for skipping each of in-game videos added.
• Message with all available content for the current build added, so now you won't be puzzled with "Why can't I proceed?" questions.
• Realistic Decal system added.

COMMENTS:

As you guys can see, your detailed feedback has resulted in many changes and tweaks to the look and feel of the game, and we didn’t want to wait to reward you for that.

I’d also like to talk about graphics. From my picky point of view (which criticize even games like DA: Inquisition) I am finally satisfied with the graphics, and you can see the progress yourselves by trying out our first tech build from 2014, which you can see on IndieDB: Indiedb.com.

However, what you can see now is only one quarter of what we have planned for the full graphical capabilities of the game, and the source build you are playing is already a whopping 50Gb :)! We switched off a lot of features because of common hardware limitations, but we’ll keep the source production in reserve so that we could gradually switch graphic features on by the time of the full game is completed. Through every stage of development, regardless of how long that takes, the game should look cool and be easy on the eyes.

This is all important because graphics go hand-in-hand with optimization. Despite the 60-100fps performance I get while streaming on my machine, we’ve only implemented about 30% of all our optimizations. So, please be patient if you’re having issues on older machines. We’ll run our full optimization circuit by the end of development on all five areas of the Prologue. This is because the hard optimization circle we’ve developed and tested will irreversibly change the build and we’ve got some work ahead of us before we’re ready to tackle that.

Lastly, the hobbling animation for your character is not the default animation. It is animation for humanoid creatures that have less than 10% of their Hit Points, and/or do not have a crippled leg, or don’t have the special Endurance-related feat. In the future these injuries might also lower a victim’s speed. We’ve also got various idle animations prepared for them as well, so please take a look!

"THE FALL OF GYES" DIGITAL VERSION RELEASED!

There’s nothing quite like fulfilling your promise and keeping your word. Today, almost a year after the TFoG Kicktarter campaign, I’m proud to present to you the full digital version of The Fall of Gyes graphic novel.

Most of our TFoG Kickstarter backers can find the link for it (with password) in a previous closed update. Most of our After Reset RPG backers can get the digital novel in the Steam folder of their game (It’ll be in something like...\SteamApps\common\After Reset RPG\add-ons\graphic_novel-the_fall_of_gyes).

Those who backed TFoG directly on PayPal will receive their link via e-mail.

The formats for the graphic novel are: PDF (PC) and CBR (tablets).

I am sincerely grateful for your support, trust and patience that you’ve shown us. I asked for your help and your prayers as I embarked on this new journey-and you rooted for us. According to After Reset tradition, I’d like to share something more with you, for those who saw sparks of light in the project and believed in it even at such an early stage. In gratitude, I therefore present the following:

• every TFoG KS backer is listed forever in the credits as a special thank you, both in digital and in physical versions (see this thread).

Even though I haven’t received any complaints - only cheering mails and replies - I want to thank everyone again for the supportive attitude you showed us despite significant delays. That really means a lot to me. Your warm attitude helped me to concentrate my energy on fixing issues and eliminating obstacles so that we could complete this graphic novel with the best possible quality.

I also haven’t forgotten about any of the other obligations I have toward you, and we’re preparing for the physical version (a splendid hardcover) as well as for VIP physical figure of the protagonist that was promised. It should really be something fantastic!

For those interested, here’s a brief list of topics that slowed down the development, and keep in mind these are not excuses, just the truth:

1. Quality and attention to detail was a big one for me, because I demand perfection from all of the staff. A lot of things that would be perfectly acceptable for casual commercial products falls short of my vision and would constitute a compromise for the purposes of maximizing profit. Some art was rejected for this reason, and we had to start over from scratch.

2. The second deadly issue was 'the nature of people of art.' It turned out that you can’t really predict it. I mean, my personal attitude to promises is perfectly described in House of Cards: "The nature of promises is that they remain immune to changing circumstances." But a few months after the Kickstarter ended, we were unable to contact Adam and we eventually received word that he had been suffering from a crippling bout of depression. Keeping in mind my promise to you, and the responsibility I received with the money you trusted me with, there was a moment where I almost started over from scratch with another artist. I’m glad to say this didn’t happen, and once we had re-established communication with Adam, he made great efforts to complete the novel as soon as possible.

3. Finally, there were issues with an increase of costs. We had to raise additional funds because of the two points above. Thus far our budget for TFoG is approximately three times higher than the cash we got from Kickstarter campaign (bear in mind a substantial percentage was taken by Kickstarter, Amazon, Banks, etc. for handling the funds). I was only able to keep this project solvent by selling my other business and borrowing funds from that. As promised, the quality of the product is of the highest concern to me.

Once again, thank you for your support and patience. This novel would never become a reality without you!

"THE FALL OF GYES" CHARACTERS

Finally, it’s my pleasure to introduce the main characters for the graphic novel: Alan, and Gia!

Both of Alan’s parents, Megan Tong and Jodie Bodrick had high posts in the United Governments Military Corps, both when he was born in 112 A.R., and when his sister was born a year later.

But despite their status, material wealth, and having had two children, two years later, Megan and Jodie got divorced. It’s not fully clear what their reason was, but a few months later, Megan began to drink heavily, gamble and get mixed up in the shady Old Cans District. It’s not surprising that this led to Megan being transferred into reserve, and all parental rights being given to Jodie.

It seems that these events finally broke Megan. A month after she stopped answering the phone, her rider was found by Helios police 40 miles from the city with traces of narcotics inside. Search operations turned up nothing, and by Alan’s 9th birthday, Megan’s ID status had been changed from “missing” to “dead.”

Alan and Deb’s second mother, Jodie Bodrick took care of the children as much as she could, providing both of them with a trust fund for education and finding their places in life. Her love and care played an important role in the formation of Alan’s internal world, just as much as the necessity of care for his sister, mother and close friends.

This experience would prove especially useful for Alan, when in 129 A.R., Jodie died during the Dallas Incident. Suppressing his feeling of grief with his sense of responsibility, he would continue to care for his sister with a special energy, taking upon himself not only the role of older brother, but also parent.

After having been wounded in training in March 131 A.R., he ended up in Salus Hospital in western Helios, where he met Gia Bellakofka on a hospital bed. The couple fell in love at first sight and ever since then have rarely been seen without one another.

In 132 A.R., Gia and Alan, both with one year of service left, signed up for the Military Corps together for their last training tour, after which they planned on getting married. A few months later, Alan was sent to Gyes, a distant outpost on the surface. They applied for a couple’s transfer, and were accepted, so Gia was sent off with him.

Gia was born September 14th, 112 A.R. in a typical middle class United Governments family. Gia’s father, Jensen Belakofka, a reserve member of the Military Corps, owned a small agriculture business, while her mother, Katrina Malik managed a small ecological department in the Economic Corps.

Gia spent most of her happy childhood in the capital, Underearth. Being a typical fidgety child, she often got in trouble with her parents, but every time, as if by a miracle, she was able to wriggle her way out of the weirdest situations. She was so good at getting out of trouble, that despite her getting into an endless number of less than great situations (more absurd than dangerous), her parents only had to move her to another school once.

At 16, when she reached legal majority, following the standard Training Program, Gia went through a yearlong tour in the Helios Social Corps, then in the Science Corps, and at 19 in the Economic Corps. She kept herself entertained with semilegal cave racing, which landed her in the hospital in March 131 A.R., where, lying on a hospital bed, she met Alan Bodrick. The couple fell in love at first sight and ever since then have rarely been seen without one another.

In 132 A.R., Gia and Alan, both with one year of service left, signed up for the Military Corps together for their last training tour, after which they planned on getting married. A few months later, Alan was sent to Gyes, a distant outpost on the surface. They applied for a couple’s transfer, and were accepted, so Gia was sent off with him.

* * *

Thanks for your support, guys. As well as for the quick and confident replies on voting for the novel's cover :)

Looking good! Though when you scale up the floor like on the first two images, it looks like it would make you trip over gaps.

I guess the interiors are all extremely clean and immaculate, as to contrast them to the exact opposite of the exterior world? Would be cool if your characters got stained by the outside world and have to go through some decontamination before entering the interiors again.

I still think it looks a little bit too clean. Will there be any decals or particles (e.g. dust) to liven up the interiors a bit?

Also, the walls with the doors look busy and noisy, compared to the other wall panels.